N. Korea takes various steps to evade sanctions: U.N. panel+

NEW YORK, July 17 Kyodo -
North Korea has transferred operations of state-controlled companies and
disassembled arms before smuggling them abroad, among other moves, to evade
international sanctions, according to a final report compiled by a U.N. expert
panel.
The report, a copy of which Kyodo News obtained Friday, says the designations
by the U.N. Security Council Sanctions Committee on North Korea of eight
companies and five individuals for financial sanctions ''seriously understate
the number of known entities and individuals engaged in proscribed
activities.''
It also says the designations are ''inadequate to the task of effectively
inhibiting key DPRK parties from engaging in proscribed activities.'' DPRK
stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea's official
name.
The panel, tasked with assisting the implementation of U.N. Security Council
sanctions against Pyongyang, called upon U.N. member states to provide
information on entities and individuals believed to be engaged in illegal
activities.
The report, presented to the council in May, said that after the expert panel
designated the 13 entities and individuals, North Korea ''quickly moved to
substitute other companies to assume their activities and/or to act on their
behalf.''
For example, Green Pine Associated Co. replaced Korea Mining Development
Trading Corp., one of the eight entities subject to financial sanctions, and is
now responsible for about half of North Korea's arms and related material
exports, it said.
Green Pine Associated is under control of the General Bureau of Surveillance of
the Korean People's Army, according to the report.
The report also mentioned a case in which North Korea tried to smuggle
Soviet-made tanks to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In this case, the tanks were disassembled into small pieces, loaded onto a
British-registered cargo ship owned by a French company at a port in Dalian,
China, and reloaded onto a Liberian-registered vessel at a port in Malaysia
with a freight list of repair parts for bulldozers, according to the report.
North Korea dispatched engineers to the Democratic Republic of Congo to
reassemble these pieces into tanks, it said.
The panel was set up under Resolution 1874, which the Security Council adopted
in June 2009 to apply fresh sanctions to Pyongyang following its second nuclear
test in May that year. It played an auxiliary role in implementing the
penalties worked out by the Security Council Sanctions Committee on North
Korea.
==Kyodo
2010-07-17 20:03:33